The climate and with it temperature, is of critical importance to the functioning of society and people's well-being. Because a human generation lasts no longer than 60 years, excluding early childhood and senility, we see only a short period of the courses that climates are taking. So we are inclined to think that the world around us remains in a steady state, that tomorrow is like yesterday. And indeed, the world's climates have been remarkably steady.

But recently, we have been witnessing some warming, while at the same time the awareness arose that perhaps we, ourselves, were the cause of this warming. The obvious culprit is the carbondioxide emitted by industry and our comfortable way of life because it has long been known that it blocks part of the 'thermal' infrared radiation. For example, our 'sister' planet Venus has an atmosphere consisting of carbondioxide, and its temperature is very much higher than expected, measuring over 400 degrees Celsius, more than enough to melt lead. So more and more people became concerned that the same fate, run-away global warming, may befall Earth, or Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW).

It didn't take long before the vast majority of people were drawn into this scare scenario, predicting catastrophes from melting ice caps, rising sea levels, floods, diseases spreading, loss of species, dying corals and sea life, and much, much more. World conferences were organised to jolt politicians into action, which led to the inauguration of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to advise what is happening, how serious, and what to do. In the meantime, the World Wide Web matured, reaching billions of people with millions of pages of scary predictions. There appeared universal consensus (by the 'warmists') that 'the science was settled' and that it was now time for action - very costly action....